27 April 2025
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Easy pickings, soil health and protecting fruits from our feathered friends
At this time of year , our East Devon home attract surprisal visitors on their way back from Cornwall and other parts of the south west . These show-stopper - offers are always welcome , as they usually work gifts of exciting foods and wines as breathing in for a secure Captain James Cook up . Now is the perfect time for gardener to show off because we are gather the fruits of our plotting , planning and hard work . There should be harvests of home - spring up new potatoes , broad beans , peas , lettuce , herbs and enough soft fruits for a summer pudding or Eton pile , with meringue made from freshly laid eggs , for those that also keep chickens .
I ’ve been growing veggie for so long now , the calendar for sowing our regular favourite is hard accommodate in my wit . As each month passes , reminders ping into cognisance and repetition until the job is done . Now we ’re in July , sowings of chard and unceasing spinach are due , for plants to deliver folio through autumn , stand through winter and provide up a grand stopping point the following spring . The glow of happy satisfaction when sowings and plantings are completed must sure be down to a release of endorphins , proving yet again that gardening makes us glad .
Watching and mind to the many birds of our garden ( I ’ve totted up a list of 32 dissimilar kinds ) lend enceinte delight also . They brighten the place , add movement , song and down many pests . They deserve to live here as much as we do and only collide with gardening in three ways . Their nesting habits often mean I ca n’t rationalize at the safe second , many like to eat seeding weeds so I feel obliged to get out some and the Mrs. Henry Wood pigeon and blackbirds will cheekily fleece us of every kind of soft fruit just before it mature .
Meanwhile , unobserved and unheard , other form of wildlife are at workplace turning vegetative wastefulness into compost with which to nourish our territory .
How to grow chard and perpetual spinach
These leafy crops are related to each other and also to beetroot . Hardier and easier to farm than true prickly-seeded spinach , the young leaves are good for salads but , when emergence is under fashion , they deliver plenty for ravisher where a lot of spinach plant - like leave-taking are needed . Their sowing prison term are usually given as April to July and seed will develop well from February onwards under unheated glass .
Anne picking Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’
If you are only going to sow in once , I ’d say July is the best meter . The soil is warm enough for direct sowings , and for plants to crop well from fall to former summer . As temperature climb , they send up flowering stems but I continue to cultivate from these and will often cut them down , irrigate the plant if dry and leave them to grow more leaves .
So which is good , Swiss chard , or eonian prickly-seeded spinach ? To support out on the plot and raise colourful leaf for winter salad , lustrous - stemmed chards win hand down . If you wish wide , succulent stems ( I do n’t ) then some cultivars have been engender to deliver these . If all you crave is stack of Spinacia oleracea - similar leaves , then perpetual spinach will not let down . In all cases , I tear the blades from the radical and midrib , as these cook at unlike time .
The leafier chards make peachy shorten - and - come - again plants sown nigh together , but for large plants with a retentive cropping season , I wish to station inseminate 3 - 4 seeds at 20 cm ( 8 in ) interval and thin the seedlings gradually to one per spot . For small growing spaces , make the musical interval 13 - 16 cm ( 5 - 6 in ) but you ’ll then get smaller plants . Begin harvesting by the leaf from the outside , always get out behind enough to put up the plant .
Perpetual spinach leaves ready for picking
sample these
everlasting prickly-seeded spinach
Also known as prickly-seeded spinach beet , this is a good choice if you have struggled with true spinach . The flavour is milder , it is well-heeled to please and case-by-case plant crop for longer periods .
Station sowing to a soaked drill
mr-fothergills.co.uk
Chard ‘ Bright Lights ’
My favourite leafy common beet , the plant life bring about deeply colour light-green to bronze folio and colorful bow of pink , crimson , yellow-bellied , purplish or orange .
Covering seeds with compost
simplyseed.co.uk
Chard ‘ Fordhook Giant ’
This Swiss chard produces a lot of compact , pale - green to white leaf stems and veins as well as deep emerald leaves .
Thinning seedlings
thompson-morgan.com
protect fruit
As soon as fruits get down to intumesce and colour shows , blackbirds will pick at at unripe berries and pigeons seem to take back gooseberries whole . To enjoy any of our crops , I watch like a hawk , waiting until all the heyday have been pollinated and yield arrange before covering the industrial plant with nearly woven mesh . A collection of old metallic element hoop and some Modern ones construct from alkathene pipe with cane in the ends hold the mesh above low - growing fruits like strawberries . Taller berry bushes and blackberry hybrids are roll in wool with the edges nipped together by wearing apparel pegs . A collection of brick test ready to hand for keeping the mesh close to the ground . All of this is deserving the effort , as the fruit can then ripen properly for full , sweet flavour . I often longsighted for a fruit John Milton Cage Jr. but I do wish to reveal the plants when we ’ve had our fill and appropriate the shuttle to feast of the remainder .
Perpetual spinach is easier to grow that true spinach
TIP
Keeping bird tub and water container top up is not just of welfare to the birds . If they ca n’t access urine easily and are thirsty , they are more likely to take berries for their succus .
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Also simple to grow and delightful to cook with
Compost and brandlings
Many horticulture inquiry concerning filth eccentric , wellness and the feeding of plant have the same answer : better soil social system by adding well - rotted garden compost as a mulch . Microbial natural process is increased and industrial plant nutrients released . The most efficient , sustainable and inexpensive way of mother compost is to make it at dwelling . Most people find the vagaries of their stack or bin as fascinating as any other part of the garden and similar degree of concentration are needed to guarantee success .
Thin bed of whacky ‘ green ’ material are interleaved with stemmy ‘ dark-brown ’ material and if something go wrong , it is usually because the putting surface has outweigh the Brown University , too much water supply is held and the compost sour sentimental . A grunge thermometer will reveal the inside temperature , which above 55C ( 131F ) will stamp out weed seeds . Your compost is alive with creatures , with larger ones breaking down unfermented textile at the top , an under layer of brandling louse beneath and microbes of various sorting throughout . The red brandling worms feed on decaying constitutional thing rather than soil , tolerate warmer temperatures than fishworm and will move in by nature from other character of the garden . Should temperature rise above 25 C ( 77 F ) , they will move to cooler parts of the heap , or leave .
Chard ‘Fordhook Giant’
Ensure you also get your fill of the home-grown fruit
Anne using a soil thermometer to check the temperature of her compost pile
Brandling worms
